This unique contribution to the developing field of theological aesthetics links the theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar and that of Jacques Maritain to the Agrarian writers of the American South: Caroline Gordon, John Crowe Ransom, Allan Tate, and William Lynch. For all of these great twentieth-century writers, Christ is the image of reality and the ultimate form of beauty. Beauty, for so long the 'Cinderella' of the transcendentals, has been rediscovered in recent years largely through the work of Maritain and von Balthasar. Francesca Murphy studies this breakthrough in relation to its patristic, medieval, and modern background. Through a discussion of romanticism and postmodernism, of poetry and metaphysics, she reveals the importance of the sacramental imagination as the key to the renewal of Christology and of modern Christian literature.